Chess was one of the first games that was ever taught to me. I vividly recall the moment when my dad showcased the different chess pieces in front of me calling out their names and telling me how they would move. We were in the living room, sitting at the dark wood dining table. I must have been 8 at the time. I recall I started playing with my cousin of pretty much the same age shortly after; sometimes I would win, sometimes he would... but I would win more often, simply because I was playing more.
Growing up I always felt challenged and in some cases intimidated by my dad's ability. He's a fine chess player and not being able to win against him when I was a child wasn't as frustrating as having to admit that also at an older age I wouldn't make it. This slowly brought me off the track with the game of chess, and with no practice it's easy to loose grip of the game, it's strategy.
You might have seen the post I wrote about games on Android some day ago and this post is somehow connected to the previous one. Chess on Android is bringing back the chess fanatic that was in me, hiding and still pretty much 9 year old: a beginner and eager to learn. Here I am then, writing about chess, how awesome it is and why it's something everyone should play.
Awesome Wikipedia tells me that the game of Chess was born in India and is one of the most popular games in the world. By performing some additional research I found out, but it wasn't that difficult to guess, Chess is a medieval war representation. Pieces like the king and queen, rook and knight populate the eight-by-eight board making it a grid-like battlefield, where opponents challenge each other and themselves in an intellectual competition. Learning the movements of the pieces is the first step to play chess, but it is far from being the first step to make a chess player. Strategy, vision, and calm is what often splits apart a beginner from and intermediate or advanced chess players. To fill that gap, I am engaging in the read of some cool blogs about chess, like mychessblog.com. There are endless of books about chess strategy but if you don't feel comfortable buying them right now, it might be worthwhile to start looking for some online tutorials and tips like one sites like these: beginnerchess.org , expert-chess-strategies.com , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_strategy
During my roaming around websites I found an interesting piece of academic paper explaining around what is the widespread common belief chess capabilities are connected to gender difference. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of this debate I had a look at the related article published on the Scientific American in 2008 about Men's Chess superiority explained. Statisticians attribute the fact that the top ranks of chess players don't include that many women because the pool of female players is significantly lower. This simple statistical fact creates the perfect condition to produce stronger performers whom are coming from the way bigger male group of players. Of course anyone could argue this happens because female fail at early playing stages and therefore don't make it to go on, yet this theory has never been proven to be true from pure scientific or statistical perspective.
I myself don't think there is a real gender difference, but some girls who play chess might suffer from my same "dad issue" - members of their social circle could press her to play and stay up to certain standards whether some calm and patience should be applied. The game of chess rewards calm and focus, and boys and girls might react differently when the pressure to learn and perform comes from one of their parents, maybe their opposite sex parent.
Don't young boys feel pressured to make their mums proud when doing their homework? And what happens usually...? [boys grade gap]
Growing up I always felt challenged and in some cases intimidated by my dad's ability. He's a fine chess player and not being able to win against him when I was a child wasn't as frustrating as having to admit that also at an older age I wouldn't make it. This slowly brought me off the track with the game of chess, and with no practice it's easy to loose grip of the game, it's strategy.
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Awesome Wikipedia tells me that the game of Chess was born in India and is one of the most popular games in the world. By performing some additional research I found out, but it wasn't that difficult to guess, Chess is a medieval war representation. Pieces like the king and queen, rook and knight populate the eight-by-eight board making it a grid-like battlefield, where opponents challenge each other and themselves in an intellectual competition. Learning the movements of the pieces is the first step to play chess, but it is far from being the first step to make a chess player. Strategy, vision, and calm is what often splits apart a beginner from and intermediate or advanced chess players. To fill that gap, I am engaging in the read of some cool blogs about chess, like mychessblog.com. There are endless of books about chess strategy but if you don't feel comfortable buying them right now, it might be worthwhile to start looking for some online tutorials and tips like one sites like these: beginnerchess.org , expert-chess-strategies.com , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_strategy
During my roaming around websites I found an interesting piece of academic paper explaining around what is the widespread common belief chess capabilities are connected to gender difference. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of this debate I had a look at the related article published on the Scientific American in 2008 about Men's Chess superiority explained. Statisticians attribute the fact that the top ranks of chess players don't include that many women because the pool of female players is significantly lower. This simple statistical fact creates the perfect condition to produce stronger performers whom are coming from the way bigger male group of players. Of course anyone could argue this happens because female fail at early playing stages and therefore don't make it to go on, yet this theory has never been proven to be true from pure scientific or statistical perspective.
I myself don't think there is a real gender difference, but some girls who play chess might suffer from my same "dad issue" - members of their social circle could press her to play and stay up to certain standards whether some calm and patience should be applied. The game of chess rewards calm and focus, and boys and girls might react differently when the pressure to learn and perform comes from one of their parents, maybe their opposite sex parent.
Don't young boys feel pressured to make their mums proud when doing their homework? And what happens usually...? [boys grade gap]
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